Assets, Known Assets and Reference Assets
Every account, page, channel and website Vantage captures in your Information Landscape is an Asset: a neutral record with a history. Two designations sit on top of that record. A Known Asset is an Asset with enough documented behavioural evidence to warrant elevated scrutiny, scored Possible, Probable or Confirmed. A Reference Asset is an Asset you own or treat as a fixed reference point, held outside analysis so it can serve as a measurement anchor.
This page explains what each of the three means, how an Asset becomes a Known Asset, and how the designations show up in the intelligence you receive. It is written for Vantage users and the people they brief.
Asset
The base record. Any account, page, channel or website Vantage captures in your Landscape. Neutral by design.
Known Asset
An Asset with documented behavioural evidence above the entry threshold. Scored Possible, Probable or Confirmed.
Reference Asset
An Asset you own or treat as a trusted reference point. Held outside analysis as a measurement anchor.
Asset
An Asset is any account, page, channel or website captured by Vantage within an Information Landscape that can produce Publications and engage with other Assets. The term is neutral. Being recorded as an Asset says nothing about behaviour, affiliation or intent. It records that the account produced Publications relevant to your signal streams.
Vantage uses one term for all of them because an Influence Operation does not respect platform boundaries. An account on X, a page on Facebook, a channel on Telegram and a domain on the open web are different native units with different metadata. Tracked separately, one operation looks like several unrelated threat pictures. Recorded as Assets, an operation that crosses Telegram, X and a network of websites is one phenomenon.
Each Asset record persists over time and carries its history: when it emerged in the Landscape, when it went dormant, reactivated, or pivoted (changed its name, operator or focus while remaining the same record). Every Publication links back to the Asset that produced it, and every designation is applied on top of this neutral base.
The Landscape captures all Assets relevant to the engagement, including the many that are never designated. You can only detect what is abnormal when you can see what is normal.
Known Asset
A Known Asset is an Asset that has accumulated enough documented behavioural evidence to warrant elevated scrutiny. It is a designation applied to an existing Asset record, with an Evidence Score of Possible, Probable or Confirmed. It is a suspicion signal with a documented basis. It does not say who operates the Asset, what their intent is, or whether the Asset is active in an operation right now.
Three properties define the designation:
- Grounded in behaviour. The criteria are what the Asset does: coordination, timing, cross-platform deployment, fabrication, network position. Which narratives it advances or which positions it takes are never criteria. An Asset that changes its messaging entirely keeps its designation while the behavioural evidence holds.
- Decomposable. Every designation traces to specific evidence points from identifiable sources, each dated and graded. The designation can be inspected and explained on request.
- Scored. The Evidence Score describes the depth and convergence of the evidence on record. It does not measure danger, impact or intent.
The Evidence Score
Level | Evidence on record | How to treat it |
|---|---|---|
Possible | Early signals from credible sources | A hypothesis worth tracking. Do not change strategy on this alone. Possible means early, not unreliable. |
Probable | Solid, multi-source evidence | A working assessment. When this Asset pushes a narrative, treat it as a higher-priority signal than the same narrative from an unexamined Asset. |
Confirmed | Extensively documented across independent sources | Established intelligence. Brief leadership, allocate resources. Confirmed describes evidence depth, not certainty about identity or intent. |
The score is dynamic. New evidence raises it. Weakening or retracted evidence lowers it, which can downgrade a Known Asset or, below the entry threshold, remove the designation. A score is a description of the record today, never a forecast.
Where the evidence comes from
Evidence accumulates against the Asset record from two complementary streams.
What it contains
Vantage's own observation of the Landscape:
- Synchronised publishing across Assets at non-organic scale or timing
- Dormancy and reactivation aligned with political events
- The same content deployed across platforms in patterns indicating central production
- Fabrication and impersonation artefacts
- Amplification relationships consistent with engineered infrastructure
How it is graded
By specificity and validation: an analyst-reviewed observation corroborated across platforms or time windows outweighs an unvalidated automated detection. Each observation is logged as a discrete point in time with its conditions captured.
A designation is strongest when the streams converge. A single external finding alone may bring an Asset to Possible. Corroboration through internal observation, or a second independent external source, advances it toward Probable. Sustained convergence across multiple independent sources crosses to Confirmed. The exact weighting rules are part of LetsData's operational specification and are shared within engagements where they are relevant.
Attribution is a separate step
Known Asset answers one question: what has this Asset done. Who operates it is a different question with its own evidence requirements, answered through LetsData's attribution methodology and recorded as an Entity badge on the Known Asset. The two layers are independent. A Known Asset is actionable without an Entity badge, and an Entity badge does not replace the behavioural record. Attribution is never inferred at the moment of detection; where it has not been established, the Known Asset stands on its behavioural evidence alone.
Reference Asset
A Reference Asset is an Asset whose identity and operator you already know, either because you own it or because you treat it as a trusted reference point. It is held outside the classification pipeline so it can serve as a fixed measurement anchor in the Landscape.
Typical Reference Assets are your organisation's official pages and channels, an executive's verified handle, a regulator's official page, or a benchmark publication in your sector. They are registered during onboarding and can be adjusted within an engagement.
Vantage does not analyse Reference Assets. It measures activity around them. Holding them aside is what makes three recurring questions answerable:
- Is my own messaging reaching the audience I am trying to reach?
- How does my reach compare with the hostile activity targeting the same audience on the same narrative?
- Is that hostile activity rising to the level of spreading a narrative, or is it still marginal?
An Asset cannot be both the thing under examination and the yardstick the examination is measured against, which is why a Reference Asset is never also a Known Asset. Activity that targets a Reference Asset, such as impersonation of your official page, is detected and reported like any other behaviour in the Landscape; the Reference Asset itself stays out of scope for designation.
How the three relate
Asset is the base record. Known Asset and Reference Asset are designations applied to it, and they are mutually exclusive.
| Asset | Known Asset | Reference Asset |
|---|---|---|---|
What it is | Any account, page, channel or website captured in the Landscape | An Asset with documented behavioural evidence above the entry threshold | An Asset you own or treat as a trusted reference point |
Who decides | Captured automatically when it produces relevant Publications | Designated through LetsData's logged evidence process | Registered by you with LetsData at onboarding |
Carries a score | No | Yes: Possible, Probable or Confirmed | No |
Analysed by Vantage | Yes, as part of the Landscape | Yes, with elevated weight | No. Activity around it is measured |
Can be attributed | Only once designated a Known Asset | Yes, through a separate Entity badge | Operator already known |
Changes over time | Emerges, goes dormant, reactivates, pivots | Score rises, falls or is removed as evidence changes | Updated when your own set of accounts changes |
Where you see the designations
The same designation system, score and evidence streams run through every Vantage surface. What changes is how you encounter them.
The full evidence record of each Known Asset involved, every external finding and internal observation with source, date and grading, assembled into a chain you can share with leadership, partners or oversight bodies.